A History of Quebec Food Trends: Hélène-Andrée Bizier
Foods, recipes and diets go in and out of fashion. Kale is today’s fashionable vegetable, crème brulée the restaurant dessert of the era, and gluten-free the current diet. How long will each fashion last?
A few years, suggests Hélène-Andrée Bizier, respected food researcher and writer specializing in the gastronomic history of Quebec. She has the ability to spot a food trend almost in advance but also to place each fashion in context. Her books take the long view, whether it be about the cuisine of top Montreal chefs reinterpreting the cuisine of the era of Quebec founder Samuel de Champlain, a biography of longtime LaPresse restaurant critic Françoise Kayler showing the trends in dining out, or – her latest subject – her aversion to genetically modified foods. Asked to spot the changes in our eating in modern times, Hélène-Andrée was able to hark back as long ago as the 1960s, thanks to her study of published accounts and – more recently – her own dining experiences.
Quebec is fertile territory for food researchers, she notes, because of its longtime love of good food. The province has the most restaurants in Canada; 2009 figures revealed 21,038 establishments in operation or 25 per cent of all Canadian restaurants. Food festivals flourish all over Quebec, none larger than Montreal’s annual restaurant celebration, Montréal en lumière. Designed in 2000 to cure our mid-winter doldrums, it is still satisfying cold weather appetites with its combination of visiting chefs and local food celebrations, one of these an all-night outdoor party.
The internet reflects Quebec’s fascination with food. More and more bloggers, some of them trained journalists, others food-loving amateurs, offer continual restaurant and culinary advice. The city of Montreal stages an annual Restaurant Week and also Poutine Week.
Whatever the economy, Quebec dining out seems to increase year by year, although the style of restaurants has shifted to bistros over formal dining rooms. Recently, some longtime establishments closed: Le Piémontais, Chez Gautier, and – after 82 years – Magnan’s Tavern.
The latest major eating trend is the return of the food truck to Montreal streets after a ban dating back 70 years.
1960s
Hélène-Andrée went back 50 years in her research into food fashions, starting with trends in bread. Back then, French bread was puffy and tasteless until the Montreal bakery Maison Cousin began selling loaves that had flavour and that delectable chewy texture. Good French bread is not hard to find now, thanks to reforms initiated by Montreal baker James MacGuire and others and now adopted all over the province.
The sixties, she believes, were a time when a number of food customs we now take for granted got their start. An example was reforms to the school lunch. Schools began drawing up food policies to improve the nutrition in school cafeterias, and to ban high-fat, high-salt fast foods. Dietitians worked with teachers identifying the problem that many children came hungry to school and were so poorly nourished, they could could not learn easily. The result, still going on, is that free breakfasts were launched in inner city schools.
1970s
Come the 1970s, travel and technology combined to make a variety of changes. Duck magret and foie gras appeared in Quebec. Microwave ovens got their start in both restaurants and home kitchens. Steakhouses, once a prevalent restaurant style, began to be eclipsed by restaurants with a varied menu. The improvements in chef education, including training periods in European kitchens brought more and better foreign cuisines to Quebec.The decade wound up with the appearance of France’s new, simpler culinary style known as “nouvelle cuisine.” Yes, waiters had to explain, those green beans on your plate are supposed to be crisp.
As the 1980s approached, Hélène-Andrée remembers restaurants began replacing a single dessert with a “symphonie de desserts” – a plate of small pastries, ice cream or sorbet. The first Bring Your Own Wine restaurants opened, a few restaurants began offering wine by the glass, and, instead of cocktails made of hard liquor, wine became a fashionable apéritif.
1980s
More and more women started working outside the home and everyone began eating out more. Business lunches stopped being all-male occasions. Crêperies, which had been popular from Expo ’67 on, faded in preference to pizzerias, the best of these equipped with wood-burning ovens. Home cooks took to buying ready-made food regularly and not just phoning out for pizza. By the mid-eighties, the traditional French cuisine was adapting. Crème brûlée got a start, displacing the classic crème caramel as the basic dessert in restaurants.
Beef had begun to face serious competition from chicken, lean pork, and even lamb, a meat early Quebecers scorned, having originally raised sheep for their wool rather than food. Hélène-Andrée also remembers the appearance of ostrich, considered a safe red meat in the wake of the beef contamination scare known as Mad Cow Disease. Other specialty meats came into fashion – venison, bison, elk and game birds – much of it produced, at the urging of top chefs, on special Quebec farms. Irradiation of perishable foods, a system of retarding spoilage with ionizing radiation, became a hot consumer topic. Bottled water appeared in restaurants, men began taking cooking courses once attended only by women, and chefs experimented with vacuum cooking (“sous-vide”) so they could prepare dishes in advance. California cuisine came into fashion in Canada, helping the new preference for fresh, local ingredients over imports.
1990s
Quebec’s unique liqueur called cidre de glace was launched and produce from hydroponic greenhouses – first Boston lettuce, then cherry tomatoes – became a regular presence on vegetable counters. Spring water from the Abitibi region became fashionable and farm-raised salmon started to compete with beef. Raw foods, including carpaccio and tartare became popular in restaurants. Chefs, travelling more, tried fusion cuisine and the burgeoning interest in eating more healthfully caused chefs to start offering what they called “healthy” menus, some with calorie counts posted. Ethnic restaurants moved up in the world from their one-time status as tiny neighbourhood establishments. Poutine appeared on the scene, became both a street food fashion and a curiosity abroad; it was even served at the Canadian embassy in Paris. Local specialties were promoted; the influential French chef Paul Bocuse accepted an offer to endorse New Brunswick lobster.
About 1995, Hélène-Andrée recalls that chefs started opening their own restaurants, small establishments that reflected their personal cuisine. Fostering the trend to encourage local producers, they also changed from giving names to their dishes on menus to listing the ingredients. Some chefs cited producers’ names alongside a dish, a custom still in effect. Farmer’s markets began to increase and strengthen.
The decade wound up with a move away from the classics to simpler, homey food. “Comfort food” appeared, even on the menus of high-end restaurants. An inquiry by Le Devoir in 2007 revealed that shepherd’s pie (pâté chinois) was rated as Quebec’s national dish.
The popularity of casual dining was reflected in the increase in bistros and the steakhouse began to return to favour, but in a more sophisticated form than in the 1970s. The cheese tray appeared as a course at fine dining restaurants. Bottled water continued to advance; some restaurants offered various water brands as part of their wine lists.
2000 to 2015
The era of celebrity chefs started in Quebec, led by the recognition of Anne Desjardins, chef and co-owner of the Laurentians’ fine dining restaurant L’Eau à la Bouche. In 2002 she was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre national du Québec. The number of chefs named to the Order of Canada increased, the latest to be so honoured Normand Laprise, chef and co-owner of Toqué!
What trend will appear next? Hélène-Andrée will be watching her menus and her plates. The only sure bet: Quebec will continue its love affair with food.